Policy | Research | Media

Book Review: The Lebanese Connection

By the third page of Jonathan Marshall’s new book, “The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War and the International Drug Traffic”, anyone who knows Lebanon can see why the book has raised so many eyebrows. In one stroke of the pen, Marshall accuses modern Lebanon’s founding fathers Bechara el-Khoury and Riad el-Solh of profiting from the drug trade as they were putting together the pieces that is Lebanon today. By 1990, the glue that held those pieces together, and almost tore them apart, was hashish and heroin.

The Lebanese Connection is Marshall’s third book about drug trafficking, covering the history of the Lebanese drug industry, its supporters (both internal and external) and the extent to which it constituted a major linchpin in the global narcotics trade from independence until the end of the civil war. In doing so, Marshall runs the gauntlet of implicating major Lebanese families, politicians, political parties, banks, airlines, external actors and intelligence agencies, by name, for dealing in, or at least being affiliated with, the drug trade during that time.

Any Lebanese citizen reading the book will likely feel a sense of unease and suspicion of any author who points a finger squarely at many of the figures and families that form the crux of today’s body politic, even if it is across sectarian and communal affiliations. Merely listing names of all the actors identified by Marshall would not do his research justice, not to mention the fact that a Beirut-based publication would not last very long after printing them.

Marshall’s research is extensive; a fifth of the book’s girth is dedicated to notes and appendices. But, by the author’s own admission, the work is nevertheless skewed. It relies heavily on documents he obtained over many years from United States drug enforcement agencies and personal interviews with their agents. He also draws heavily on English-language publications without attributing much bias to publications based out of the US that are known to have a pro-Western slant.

Marshall offers this book as a mere addition to the discourse about what allowed the Lebanese conflict to rage for so long. And even if half of what Marshall says is true, he has proven that the length and devastation of the protracted conflict would not have been possible without the political, financial and international support for Lebanon’s drug industry.

Yet the principal strength of this work is not that it is well researched or identifies people by their names, but that it is written in a manner which allows readers to appreciate the history, relevance and consequences of how drugs fueled the civil war. Instead of the accusatory tone that most are used to in their national publications, Marshall calmly and matter-of-factly shows how, not just today, but historically the Lebanese authorities have shirked their responsibilities.

Hashish and poppy farmers never got nipped in the bud because the authorities either colluded with them, did not have the political ability to do so or could not offer them economic alternatives. Marshall details how financial institutions turned a blind eye to the billions of dollars in drug money entering their vaults in the 1960s and 1970s and the apparatus that supported the smuggling efforts from transit routes to “illegal” ports during the 1975-1990 war, as trade value shifted from hashish to the more valuable opium-based products that were either sourced and processed in Lebanon or shipped through.

When accusations are exaggerated he points out that they are likely not true. This is the case when he deals with Israeli accusations against the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hezbollah or the Syrians, not that he exonerates them either. The bulk of the trafficking, however, is attributed to the Christian militias that controlled the ports along the coast, but he does not fail to mention the political protection the Muslim farmers of the valley received in the first place and the minorities that facilitated the international network of smugglers and mafiosos needed to market the drugs to the West.

By the end, Lebanese will have an awkward feeling that they are still ruled by figures that ravaged the country for years and paid for it by smuggling drugs. The fact that ordinary Lebanese have been imprisoned for years, without trial, for possession or dealing in drugs, not to mention acts that pale in comparison to those committed by today’s political class is but further evidence of how the trade has warped the nations sense of justice and accountability.

A version of this article was published in Executive’s February 2013 print edition